The usual mechanism incorporated on a guitar or other similar stringed musical instrument used to adjust string tension and bring a musical instrument into correct tune is referred to as a tuning machine. This tuning machine usually consists of a hand operated mechanism that rotates a tuning peg which is an integral part of the tuning machine. There is one tuning machine for each string and they are an integral part of the musical instrument. Normally the string to be tuned is threaded through a hole in the tuning peg and the tuning peg is rotated several times by means of a arm driven gear assembly to wrap the string at least several times around the tuning peg. The musician then continues to rotate the peg to tighten the string, and by this means achieves a correct pitch for each string. On other types of stringed musical instruments such as an autoharp, piano or harp, the tuning peg is usually not a part of a tuning machine, but simply the tuning peg set in the wood or other material of the musical instrument and the tuning peg is turned by a special tool made for this purpose.
This method of wrapping the string around the tuning peg is considered to have many problems including, but not limited to, the following:                To install a new string properly according to standard accepted practice requires wrapping the string around the tuning peg by turning the knob on the tuning machine. This wrapping of the string around the tuning peg requires skill, dexterity and is very time consuming.        It is difficult to get the string to wrap around the tuning peg evenly, which results in slack or loose windings that adversely affects tuning efficiency.        The part of the string that is wrapped around the tuning peg stretches and or slips and the string goes out of tune.        When turning the tuning machine to tune the string, not only is the musical or vibrating portion of the string being affected, but the windings or string wraps around the tuning peg are also affected. This is inefficient.        After the string is wrapped around the tuning peg and brought to the correct pitch there is a lag time when the musical instrument string has to be stretched quite a few times to equalize or remove slack or looseness in the wraps of the string around the tuning peg, and then the guitar has to be tuned to pitch again.        On guitars a special hand driven tuning machine knob winding tool is usually considered necessary to turn the tuning machine knob. Otherwise it takes a long time to wrap the string around the tuning peg by just turning the tuning peg by hand. Using this tool does not ensure that the string will be wrapped evenly and tightly.        
Inventors have addressed these problems by developing special tuning machines that include various built-in clamping means. The musical instrument string is clamped and locked onto or into the tuning peg portion of these special tuning machines thereby avoiding the aforementioned wrappings of the string around the tuning peg. One advantage of these special locking style tuning machines is that it usually takes less than one complete turn of the tuning peg to bring the string to the correct pitch and using these locking tuning machines is considered to have the effect of keeping the guitar in tune longer. These special locking type tuning machines are complicated machines with gears, shafts, and bearings that are expensive to manufacture and are not even available for many of the large family of stringed musical instruments, especially acoustic stringed instruments.
These aforementioned special locking tuning machines are also usually only pre-installed on higher-end, modern and expensive guitars. If a musician wants to retrofit his guitar with these special tuning machines, he typically must incur the additional expense of taking the guitar to a repair shop to modify the guitar to accept the new clamping style tuning machines.
In addition for a vast number of electric guitars, acoustic guitars, mandolins, banjos cellos, violins, etc., there is no easy way to utilize the aforementioned locking the string to the tuning peg technology. For most of these instruments there are no locking style tuning machines available at all. On older guitars with antique or collector value, modifying the instrument to use a locking style tuning peg is not an option because modifying these antique type guitars decreases the value of the instrument. Since these special locking tuning machines are put on the guitar permanently, and are hard or impossible to change from one guitar to another the musician needs a separate set for each guitar. Therefore if a musician wants to use the clamping of the string to the tuning peg technology of attaching the string to the musical instrument tuning peg on the stringed instruments he already owns, there are no easy or cheap ways to do this.
What is needed is an apparatus that makes the tuning process faster, enables the string to maintain the tension that has been applied during the tuning operation for a longer period of time and addresses the other issues identified above.